London 太太 Tàitài

Living in London is unlike holiday in London, or anywhere else that matters. Especially when the UK Government demand more expectation investing in immigrants and hold a stricter guidelines in immigration.Property price is comparatively as expensive as the Most Costliest Place to live in the world, guess who? Nevertheless, different country, different standard of living…

From Hollywood roomies to top-end hutchers and super-rich students, there’s a well-heeled breed of tenant in town. Lucy Tobin reports on how the rental game just moved up a gear.

The Serial Daters“Thanks to renting, we’ve lived all over the coolest parts of town and had the best of everything we could never have afforded with a mortgage. Plus it means we can try out new locations, and it’s stress-free because we pass on any problems to our landlord.”

The Hutchers Up It’s not exactly out of choice that Jamie is sharing his “cosy” three-bedroom flat in Ladbroke Grove with five friends — but converting the living room into a third bedroom for Jules and Conrad to shack up in meant they could afford Zone Two rather than, er, Slough

The Rich Foreign Freshers Overseas students at the likes of Imperial College, University College and the LSE signed 41 per cent of the tenancy agreements in the past 12 months at prime addresses, according to investment fund London Central Portfolio — far outnumbering the bankers.

The Renting Landlords However long they stared at the “help to buy” numbers, a pad in London was never going to be affordable. But Liverpool? You could buy up an entire block of student flats there for the price of a maisonette in the capital.

The Hollywood Hunker Down-ers “I’m not extravagant. I share my house in London with five room-mates,” the 23-year-old Aussie says, before Instagramming a photo of them tagged “roomies on the roof”.

The Tech-Renters SwiftKey’s speed-typing Android keyboard is one of the best-selling apps in the world, with 150 million users — but co-founder and paper millionaire Ben Medlock, 35, still shares a house with the same people that he moved to London with five years ago. That’s the techie way — all spare cash goes into their start-ups and anyway, social hackathons and late-night coding sessions round the kitchen table are much more fun with flatmates.

The Hobbit-HolersThe 9ft x 8ft bedroom/kitchen is barely bigger than the average Pentonville cell, and the Kentish renter has less than 2ft of space between the mattress and ceiling. For the Hobbit-holers, though, this isn’t a drawback but a point of principle. The HH follows the tao of minimalism — all but 100 per cent of their belongings are in self-storage, or long-ago eBay’d.

The Airbnb-ers When her lease ran out on the crazy-expensive Hampstead flat Mum and Dad had been paying for, she decided to Airbnb it. Most of her belongings are boxed up in Radlett at the parental nest.